A Cure for the Blues

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A Cure for the Blues

WINDOWS XP

The most productivity-enhancing feature of Microsoft's Windows XP, set for release in October, won't be mentioned in the ad campaign. But somewhere between adding product activation and Passport authentication to the new OS, Microsoft programmers finally installed a fix for the most dreaded bug of all: the Blue Screen of Death.

For the lucky few out there who haven't seen it, the BSOD is, literally, the blue screen that appears when Windows crashes, bearing some Robocop-from-hell text message telling you a fatal exception has occurred and the current application will be terminated. It has amassed a cult following, including a photo gallery of such error messages (www.daimyo.org/bsod).

Microsoft has long denied claims of frequent BSOD appearances, even after the glitch surprised Bill Gates during a big-screen demo of Windows 98 at Comdex/Spring that year. But things changed after Jim Allchin, who heads Windows development, took a sailing sabbatical last year and spent serious hang time with friends who were (like most of us) Windows users. "I saw what a flaky mess this thing is. Seeing people struggle was pretty humbling," he recalls. Upon returning to work, Allchin campaigned to stamp out bugs in XP.

Today, he says, the bulk of blue screens aren't caused by Redmond's products. "Most happen when hardware or software is added." Sounds like a cop-out, but Quake coauthor Dave Taylor agrees with Allchin: "The BSOD problem is usually shitty device drivers, written by hardware makers handy with a soldering iron but a menace to society behind a keyboard."

While Windows XP is less likely than previous versions to turn blue, it's still not entirely crashproof. But XP does offer relief from buggy drivers. Its device manager sports a Roll Back Driver button that lets you undo crash-inducing installations, leaving the computer usable while you're on hold for tech support. Now how about a crash-specific phone number to call instead of "STOP: 0x0000003F"?